Tag Archives: Calculated Risk Blog

One of the things that conservatives have said was that Obama was growing the government by hiring tons of public sector workers. This was not true and easily proven to be false. The following is from Calculated Risk Blog, who put together the numbers and the graphs. (There is no website that I know of that does a better job at giving us an overall picture of the economy.)

A big difference between the presidencies has been public sector employment. Note the bumps in public sector employment due to the decennial Census in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010.

However the public sector has declined significantly since Mr. Obama took office (down 638,000 jobs). These job losses have mostly been at the state and local level, but more recently at the Federal level. This has been a significant drag on overall employment.

And a table for public sector jobs. Public sector jobs declined the most during Obama’s first term, and increased the most during Reagan’s 2nd term.

Term

Public Sector
Jobs Added (000s)

Carter

1,304

Reagan 1

-24

Reagan 2

1,438

GHW Bush

1,127

Clinton 1

692

Clinton 2

1,242

GW Bush 1

900

GW Bush 2

844

Obama 1

-702

Obama 2

641

128 months into 2nd term, 110 pace

Looking forward, I expect the economy to continue to expand through 2016 (at least), so I don’t expect a sharp decline in private employment as happened at the end of Mr. Bush’s 2nd term (In 2005 and 2006 I was warning of a coming recession due to the bursting of the housing bubble).

For the public sector, the cutbacks are clearly over at the state and local levels, and it appears cutbacks at the Federal level might also be over. Right now I’m expecting some increase in public employment during Obama’s 2nd term, but nothing like what happened during Reagan’s second term.

Here is a table of the top three presidential terms for private job creation (they also happen to be the three best terms for total non-farm job creation).

Clinton’s two terms were the best for both private and total non-farm job creation, followed by Reagan’s 2nd term.

Currently Obama’s 2nd term is on pace to be the 2nd best ever for private job creation. However, with very few public sector jobs added, Obama’s 2nd term is only on pace to be the third best for total job creation.

Note: Only 64 thousand public sector jobs have been added during the first twenty eight months of Obama’s 2nd term (following a record loss of 702 thousand public sector jobs during Obama’s 1st term). This is less than 8% of the public sector jobs added during Reagan’s 2nd term!

Top Employment Gains per Presidential Terms (000s)

Rank

Term

Private

Public

Total Non-Farm

1

Clinton 1

10,885

692

11,577

2

Clinton 2

10,070

1,242

11,312

3

Reagan 2

9,357

1,438

10,795

Obama 21

6,322

64

6,386

Pace2

10,838

110

10,948

128 Months into 2nd Term2Current Pace for Obama’s 2nd Term

The second table shows the jobs need per month for Obama’s 2nd term to be in the top three presidential terms.

Average Jobs needed per month (000s)
for Obama’s 2nd Term

to Rank

Private

Total

#1

228

260

#2

187

246

#3

152

220

Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/06/public-and-private-sector-payroll-jobs.html#j5XVy8W01MpQe7Td.99

Errington C. Thompson, MD

Dr. Thompson is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats.

A Letter to America

There are many books which have been written documenting the issues of the Bush Presidency; A Letter to America draws the reader a clearer more concise picture of major policies of this White House.